North County Airport feels squeeze when Trump visits

Training, rental firm says restrictions cost $2,500-$3,500 daily.

Echoing Lantana airport officials, a business owner at the North County Airport in suburban Palm Beach Gardens said flight restrictions for President Donald Trump are devastating to small businesses that depend on it.

Marc Rossi is co-owner and business director for SunQuest Aviation Services, which offers flight training at the airport. Flight training and practicing are forbidden within the airfield’s airspace when Trump visits, which has been three weekends in a row now.

“For a school like ours, it’s a significant impact,” Rossi said.

Pilots at the airport can continue to fly when the restrictions are in place if they file a flight plan with air traffic controllers at Palm Beach International Airport and enter an assigned code (called a “squawk” code) into their planes’ transponders.

S t udent pi l ot s c oul d f ly t o another airport, do their training and fly back, but that would r e qu i r e a d d i t i o n a l t i me a n d money, said Rossi, a hobby pilot.

The Lantana airport, about 6½ miles south of Trump’s “winter White House” in Palm Beach, effectively shuts down during Trump’s visits. About two dozen people who own or operate businesses at the airport have said that two straight weekend stays by the president have cost them thousands of dollars, and some of their customers have fled to other airports. The Witham Field Airport in Stuart, for example, is just outside the 30-nautical-mile outer ring of the temporary flight restrictions.

At the North County Airport, about 21 miles from Trump’s Mara-Lago estate, Rossi said the president’s visits cost his flight instruction and rental business, at minimum, $2,500 to $3,500 a day, or $5,000 a weekend. He said he